Read Online Chance by Kem Nunn - Free Book Online Page A

Sometimes all you could see from across the room was the top of her head down to her eyes. She had red hair and the kind of horn-rimmed glasses once favored by Buddy Holly. Her skin was milk white, pure as the driven snow save for the full-sleeve tattoo decorating one arm, extreme perhaps but beautifully done, the work of some latter-day Dalí, all melting clocks and serpents in the garden. He didn’t know what else. The tattoos disappeared into her clothing but presumably went on from there. There was a small silver stud in her face just beneath her lower lip. She favored dresses from retro secondhand stores and Converse sneakers but she knew how to put it all together. Before reinventing herself as a psych major at UC–Berkeley she had studied art at Hunter College in New York City. She was really quite sexy in a druggy, artistic sort of way when you got right down to it. Probably why he hired her. Not that this was anything he would ever have acted upon. But he did like seeing her there, behind the big, curved counter, greeting patients, moving about the office. It was why people kept exotic birds. Her colors filled the room.
    “The Jenkinses are waiting,” Lucy said. She affected a somewhat breathless delivery, one eye on the wounded Jaclyn. “I told Mrs. Blackstone she would have to make another appointment . . .”
    “It’s all right,” Chance told her. “I’ll handle it.”
    “The Jenkinses have been waiting for half an hour.”
    “Please tell them that I will be with them momentarily.”
    Lucy looked at him just long enough to punctuate her disapproval then did as she was asked.
    Chance crossed to where Jaclyn stood waiting, blue circles beneath her yellow cat’s eyes. “I do have someone,” he said.
    “Should I go?”
    “It may be awhile, is what I’m saying.”
    She looked to the window as if to master her emotions.
    The Jenkinses were a married couple with two small children. Ralf Jenkins was thirty-nine years old. He was two years post a second craniotomy and following radiation therapy for a malignant brain tumor. Since the second surgery he’d been experiencing word-finding difficulty and fine-motor problems with his right hand. Chance had recommended both a speech pathologist with regard to his language problems and a psychotherapist for assistance with the psychological effects of his brain cancer. That had been at the first of the year. Last week they had scheduled a return visit for reasons he might anticipate but had yet to be certain of. He imagined the appointment would take anywhere from one to two hours. Since moving into private practice, Chance had always tried to make large allowances of time for the patients who came to see him. Their conditions were often grave. They were often confused, frightened, angry. The universe was already rushing them. They didn’t need it from him. “How much time do you have?” he asked of Jaclyn. He was aware of Lucy, watching from her post in the reception area.
    “I have the afternoon. I’m sorry to just show up like this . . .”
    He raised a hand. “It’s okay. It’s dull waiting up here. There’s a little café just downstairs at the end of the block. Why don’t you go down there and wait, have a cup of coffee.” He looked to a table in his waiting room. “Take a magazine. I should be able to join you in an hour or so.” He looked at his watch. It was just after one. “I have to pick up my daughter by four, but we should have some time to talk.”
    Her eyes found his. “That would be very kind of you,” she said. Her fingers fiddled with the buttons on her sweater. He could see that her thumbs were raw around the nails where she picked or chewed at them. “I have a cell phone,” she told him. “If I have to leave, I’ll call your office. But I’ll try to wait.”
    “That’ll be fine.”
    “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know . . .” She started off on some new train of thought then reigned herself in.